Page:Solution of the Child Labor Problem.djvu/131

124 causes—greed, ignorance, and indifference of manufacturer, parent, and child—are insignificant factors. The causes of child labor are primarily economic and social. If society is not responsible for the inability of parents to provide for the support of their children, it is at least responsible for the support of those children while they are securing an education, and whatever may be said regarding social responsibility for good feeding, society is clearly responsible for not providing an educational system that will hold the children out of the mills.

Briefly the causes of child labor may be thus stated:—The system of modern industry with its labor-saving appliances, its means of employing mechanical power, and its division of labor, makes the manufacture of cheap goods possible; an insatiable public demand for quantity rather than quality leads the manufacturer to turn out many things and cheap ones; in turning out these cheap goods, the manufacturer, through the division of labor and the development of machinery, is enabled to employ children; in a competitive